A silicon wafer which is used as a material for a semiconductor element refers to a thin plate of a single crystal silicon made of polycrystalline silicon as a raw material.
A silicon wafer is divided into a polished wafer, an epitaxial wafer, a silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer, a diffused wafer, a hydrogen annealed wafer, and the like according to a processing method.
The epitaxial wafer refers to a wafer in which another single crystal layer (epitaxial layer) is grown on a surface of a conventional silicon wafer, and has fewer surface defects than the conventional silicon wafer, and has properties capable of controlling a concentration or kind of impurities. In addition, the epitaxial layer has high purity and excellent crystallinity, which is advantageous for improving a yield and device properties of a highly integrated semiconductor device.
As a silicon oxide layer becomes thinner, a tolerance range of a thickness of the oxide layer becomes smaller, and it is also becoming increasingly important to uniformly form the oxide layer.
Therefore, in order to accurately predict a growth of an oxide layer of a silicon wafer, it is necessary to accurately predict parameters affecting the growth thickness of the oxide layer.